Dance of Death (1938)
Blurb:
My review:
Not only a début novel but a debutante one as well, for the plot concerns the murder of Kitty Jocelyn, struck down with malaria at her coming-out party and found dead in a snow-drift the next morning, poisoned with a reducing medicine. The plot is quite mystifying: everybody loses by the death; the poison could not have been administered; and drugs, espionage, liaisons dangereuses and parapraxis abound. By the time the mystery is solved, it seems that anybody—and everybody—could have done it. Fortunately, Dr. Willing, psychiatric advisor to the D.A.’s office, is able to solve it by unusual and fascinating psychological clues, and reveal a motive as relevant in these days of anorexia and publicity as it was then.